Tech & Science Time of death written in your genes — and it could help forensic investigators

00:59 14 february 2018

00:59 14 february 2018 Source:
abc.net.au

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The genetic machinery inside some cells can keep whirring away hours — perhaps even a couple of days — after we've shuffled off this mortal coil.

Time of death written in your genes — and it could help forensic investigators . The advanced detection technique, which allows investigators to take prints from problematic exhibits, such as spent ammunition casings, was carried out in partnership with the

Genetic clocks that start ticking after you die could one day help forensic investigators better nail down time of death.

When our heart stops beating, our body tissues don't instantly up and die too. The genetic machinery inside some cells can keep whirring away hours — perhaps even a couple of days — after we've shuffled off this mortal coil.

Researchers from Europe and the Americas have found certain genes ramp up or wind down in skin, lungs and other body tissues in the hours after death.

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Google Glass could help children with autism socialize with others. August 02, 2018. by Maria Temming. FORENSIC LENS A new approach to determining a body’s time of death looks for patterns in genes that are active after death .

Alive or dead , these bugs can reveal where a crime took place, whether the victim had been given drugs, and the time of death . Once a suspect is caught, a forensic psychologist can determine whether they are of sound mind. Even in cases of suspected suicide, investigators can examine the

They also developed software that can analyse these gene patterns to calculate how long since that person died.

Their research was published today in Nature Communications.

What happens to genes after death?

Roderic Guigó, at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Spain, and an international team decided to investigate how death and the hours afterwards affect gene activity.

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ASFI Forensic Organisation. · 24 февраля ·. :>>> Time of death written in your genes — and it could help forensic investigators <<

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Their aim was to create the first comprehensive map of gene activity after death.

"Most of what we know about gene expression in tissues has been investigated through the analysis of samples taken from dead people," said computational biologist Professor Guigó.

The team analysed data from the US-based Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project. The GTEx repository contains thousands of tissue samples collected from corpses at different time intervals after death, along with their gene activity.

So how do scientists measure gene activity in a human tissue sample?

It's inferred from levels of mRNA, a type of genetic material similar to DNA. Levels of mRNA increase when a gene's activity is increased.

Professor Guigó and his crew examined 36 different types of tissue from 540 donors at different intervals after death and looked for gene activity that significantly rose or fell.

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By learning to recognize when and where these gene changes occur after an individual dies, researchers may be able to develop models that can accurately estimate time of death . After Death , Your Microbiome Could Still Help the Living.

They found gene activity in some tissues, such as muscle, dropped off almost immediately after blood stopped flowing.

But in others, not only did gene expression continue, but it ramped up over time.

HBA1 is one gene that ramped up. It encodes a type of haemoglobin, which shuttles oxygen around the body, and consistently increased in 10 tissues tested, including the colon, oesophagus and testis.

After death, when blood stops flowing, cells might ramp up haemoglobin production to scrounge what little oxygen is left, Professor Guigó said.

Developing a genetic stopwatch on death

The researchers then narrowed down the tissue types to the smallest combination that best predicts time of death.

They ended up with four tissue types: sun-exposed skin, fat found just below the skin, thyroid and lung.

To use those tissues in a forensic analysis setting, the team trained a machine-learning algorithm to analyse mRNA data and give the time between death and tissue collection.

When they tested the algorithm, they found its predictions were certainly not perfect, but generally accurate to within an hour. The software is open-sourced.

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LATEST NEWS. Time of death written in your genes — and it could help forensic investigators . Michael Whyte - February 17, 2018.

The main purpose of this book was to be used as a guide for other investigators so they could Forensic entomology uses the presence of Piophila casei larvae to help estimate the date of death These three genes were used because they are likely to be in varied levels during different times of

Forensic scientists currently establish a window of time of death in a range of ways, each of which "aims to narrow that window", said Brendan Chapman, a forensic biologist at Murdoch University in Perth.

These include taking a body's deep internal temperature, measuring the stiffness of muscles (rigor mortis), electrically stimulating face muscles to measure excitability, potassium levels in eyeball fluid and taking stock of maggots and other creepy-crawlies.

But, he added, "It's always been an inexact science".

"Body temperature, for instance, gives you a window of plus or minus 2.8 hours — at best," Mr Chapman said.

So the new gene-activity analysis, Mr Chapman said, is "a brilliant foundation" to help investigators calculate time of death, particularly within the first 24 hours.

The major problem was the quality of the samples.

"These are clinically collected samples, collected for various other purposes in a clinical environment and well-preserved, " he said.

"It's not like someone's house in the middle of summer, or out in the bush. What effect that has is unknown."

And in Australia, that's a problem.

"Tissue is likely to degrade very quickly, providing a very short window of opportunity to use the gene-expression method to predict [time of death]," Griffith University forensic biologist Kirsty Wright said.

Before the software is added to the forensic toolkit, Professor Guigó said, it does need some additional fine-tuning to take these factors into account.

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The latest Tweets from in-the-loop (@theloopforensic): " Time of death written in your genes — and it could help forensic investigators https Tweet with a location. You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications.

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Time of death written in your genes — and it could help forensic investigators . October 31, 2014. The acid test: Can you dissolve a body completely? November 24, 2014. New technology identifies the ‘fingerprint’ of a bullet.

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By learning to recognize when and where these gene changes occur after an individual dies, researchers may be able to develop models that can accurately estimate time of death . After Death , Your Microbiome Could Still Help the Living.

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